Mana rocks in 5 color EDH?
Deck Help forum
Posted on April 1, 2014, 9:50 a.m. by MageBlue
About to start playing commander for the first time, my first deck is 5 color progenitus. I was planning on running every single mana rock that can add any color, like Darksteel Ingot .
There upside over this compared to normal mana acceleration is they are colorless, so it allows me not to go heavy on green for color fixing and ramp.
I was wondering, if I have an army of mana rocks out will my opponents target them and leave me with no mana?
Ive never actually played commander. This is my first deck, so I wasnt exactly sure how much hate artifacts would get at all.
So you would advise going for more traditional ramp, rather than mana rocks?
April 1, 2014 10:11 a.m.
MindAblaze says... #4
I would say you'll want a balance of traditional ramp spells like Cultivate and Skyshroud Claim with efficient mana rocks like Sol Ring , Mana Crypt and potentially Chromatic Lantern and Coalition Relic . Darksteel Ingot is good too since they can't nuke it.
I think if you're at a high enough level people will always be playing to win. Diversity on your end makes it harder for them to cripple you.
April 1, 2014 10:16 a.m.
Depends so much on the meta. Where I play, nobody would care about your mana rocks, because they'd just counter whatever you ramped into.
April 1, 2014 10:18 a.m.
Chromatic Lantern is a really good one for that style, Ranger's Path will allow you to search out G/X shocks which id say is better than 2 basics in many cases unless you already have shocks out lol, but i also love Farseek just to grab my hallowed fountain if its missing
April 1, 2014 10:31 a.m.
Yeh, if you do run a lot of rocks, you can expect people to show up with Bane of Progress etc etc.
I would recommend Farseek , Nature's Lore , Three Visits , Skyshroud Claim , Birds of Paradise , Cultivate and Harrow . You can use the 'search for a forest cards' to grab shocklands.
April 1, 2014 10:39 a.m.
Yeah, I generally recommend against Three Visits as it is 30 dollars and has an effect duplicated by 10 cent commons, but if you -have- one, go for it!
April 1, 2014 10:42 a.m.
It's just that in EDH obviously you only get one copy per card so having both copies is an asset. Likewise for Imperial Seal and Vampiric Tutor . It's not worth not recommending it; because everyone independently decides what their budget is. I mean, it's not a bad card, it's up to you to decide whether you can afford it or not.
I wish you the best of luck in EDH.
Remember that Epochalyptik has many guides on his page.
April 1, 2014 10:49 a.m.
Oh also - it's worth remembering that you don't HAVE to build a 5-colour deck just because your commander allows it.
April 1, 2014 10:53 a.m.
MindAblaze says... #11
I was going to say...this is a very ambitious commander to start with.
I commend you for that though.
April 1, 2014 10:58 a.m.
I have a bit of traditional ramp, like Farseek in my deck already. I guess ill just grab up some more and take out some of the rocks
Any recommendations for non-green ramp cards. I already have a Dreamscape Artist . I dont want to invest to much of my deck in green, although ramp is a large part of it.
April 1, 2014 11 a.m.
April 1, 2014 11:09 a.m.
Thanks for all the help guys.
I actually have a Land Tax lying around. So ill throw that in
April 1, 2014 11:13 a.m.
"Go after the mana producers" is a very common mantra in my meta.
I tend to evaluate mana producing cards in terms of how difficult they are to remove. Creatures are easiest, then Artifacts, then Enchantments, then Lands. (Most metas greatly frown upon land destruction and that can mean that lands are extra unlikely to be destroyed.) So, if you are looking to protect your mana base then you want to try to maximize the difficulty with removing it against not putting all of your eggs in one basket.
With green (and white) you can focus more on getting land into play for ramp. So, why not go for it?
Devonin says... #2
In any competitive play, once people know you play a ton of artifact mana, there's no reason -not- to expect them to start adding in Shattering Spree etc.
I mean, pretty much everybody uses the efficient colorless artifact mana (Sol Ring , Mana Vault , Mana Crypt etc) so there will probably be exactly as much artifact hate as normal.
April 1, 2014 10:09 a.m.